Monday, February 6, 2012

Q&A with Eric Knight

We interview Eric Knight, author of Reframe: How to solve the world's trickiest problems.

Can you tell us a little about your book?

Reframe
is a book about why we struggle
with our trickiest political problems and what we can do to solve them. I take
my readers through stories from the last decade: the dot com bubble, the war on
terror, immigration, climate change, and beyond. In each case, we make the same
mistake: we fixate on what's visually compelling and we miss the bigger
picture.

In the end, Reframe
makes a surprisingly optimistic case for how we can correct political
myopia. We are not necessarily irrational. We just focus on the wrong things.
Correction is possible.

What does the title Reframe
mean?

Reframing is a way of recasting political
issues. Politics gets stuck when problems are characterized in the wrong way.
Terrorism is more than a battle to kill terrorists. Climate change is more than
a choice between the environment and the economy. Analyze a problem by the
wrong unit of analysis and the solutions are impossibly remote. ‘Reframe’ the
debate – redefine the issue with the correct terms of reference – and the
answers become accessible.

What are some of the major world problems you aim to solve in your
book?

I take on the issues which have caused the
biggest political headaches over the last decade. I start with the collapse of
Wall Street's most prestigious hedge fund in the late 90s – Long Term Capital
Management – and what it says about financial crises. (We all have the Wall
Street banker gene.) I apply the same conclusion to explain why we got stuck in
Iraq for so long. I then turn to the immigration issue, and account for the rise
of the American Tea Party. (I conclude the Tea Party isn't necessarily racist.
It's driven by a competition for resources.) I move through a suite of other
issues – climate politics, Cameron's Big Society, the role of government, and
more.

You
have described Reframe as ‘politics
meets psychology’ – can you expand on this?

I have an instinctive faith in people's natural
intelligence to solve problems. That raises an obvious question: why do we
sometimes make such terrible mistakes? That's not just a political problem. It
covers everything from when we order food in a restaurant to when we decide to
take on the wrong job. To my mind, the mistakes we make often come down to how
we view a problem. They are problems of framing rather than intelligence or
rationality.

Where
did your idea for Reframe come from?

The book really came together for me whilst
sitting on the opposite side of a train carriage to Kumi Naidoo, the head of
Greenpeace International. I have immense respect for Kumi, but as I sat
listening to him I realised I saw the world completely differently to him. Reframe was my way of articulating that
other way of seeing the world.

How is Reframe different
from other books?

It’s different because, in the end, it's an
optimistic account of human nature. It's also unique because it's not just
about 'ways of thinking'. It's not like The
Tipping Point or Nudge which
gives readers anecdotes about hockey or IQ contestants but leaves them
wondering about the real world. I offer real solutions to real world political
problems. The solutions are more than Eric Knight's view of the world. I walk
readers through the cognitive psychology of politics, and the process we must take
to get to the right answers.

What
authors and books have influenced your work?

I really like Malcolm Gladwell as a writer, and
I like the style of the New Yorker.
Matt Ridley, author of The Rational
Optimist, and Tim Harford, author of The
Undercover Economist and Adapt,
have both taught me to see the sunny side of human nature. I love what Freakonomics does for economics. I want
to do that for politics – tell the story of why we miss the answers to our
biggest political problems. To get there, I am influenced by political thinkers
old and new – David Hume and Isaiah Berlin from old world Europe; Daniel
Khaneman and David Kilcullen– from new-world military thinking and psychology. Isaiah
Berlin wrote a brilliant essay in 1953 called The Hedgehog and The Fox. The world is split between two types of
people: hedgehogs know one big thing and foxes know many little things. This is
a book about why foxes are better.